Rhoda Williams, a bright young woman accepted into MIT’s astrophysics program, aspires to explore the cosmos. A brilliant composer, John Burroughs, has just reached the pinnacle of his profession and is about to have a second child. On the eve of the discovery of a duplicate Earth, tragedy strikes and the lives of these strangers become irrevocably intertwined. Years later, they both struggle to overcome what was lost, and an essay contest whose winner will fly on the space shuttle to visit this new Earth leads Rhoda to consider the possibility of a duplicate version of herself, and wonder if her life might have turned out differently.
